A couple of months into this venture it has surprised me how little I have posted on the subject of music, given its dominance in my life.

For instance, the failure of my 250Gb LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface on Monday night, taking with it (among other things) my 125Gb iTunes music library, was the first event of 2007 to reduce me to an incoherent blubbering mess. A large part of my weekend will be spent seeking to rectify the situation; if that venture proves unsuccessful, a large part of my February salary will be spent engaging the services of a data recovery outfit. (And before any clown mentions the word “backup”, I have a backup: I just haven’t refreshed the backup for a couple of months, that’s all.)

When the Minister’s wife had her iPod “burglarised” last week, she was a bit miffed but got on with life.  If the Minister’s iPod had gone, we would have had to have a lengthy period of official mourning and at least a couple of days off work.

Yesterday, a colleague’s early morning remark had The Beatles’ A Day In The Life replaying in my head all day long, with particular emphasis on that final E major, three-piano chord (which, incidentally, sounds amazing re-mastered on the new Love album when played loud through a pair of these).  Today, for reasons that are not entirely obvious, the Minister’s internal jukebox is stuck on Joe Tex’s Show Me (“Show me a man that’s got a good woman/I’ll show you a man that goes to work hummin’…”).

The recent news of The Police’s reunion caused a little frisson in my corner of the open plan, while word of Crowded House’s imminent new album and tour rendered all efforts at work for the rest of that day entirely futile.

To a large extent, it starts and ends for me with The Beatles: if you’re going to strand me on a desert island with a solar powered iPod that only has enough room for a dozen or so albums, please make them the official Beatles releases.  If Apple’s Superbowl advert on Sunday night heralds the launch of a Beatles iPod, as widely rumoured, there’s a decent likelihood I will be queuing overnight to get one.

After The Beatles come a plethora of acts and genres that fill up the rest of the My Top Rated playlist.

I am currently going through something of a soul phase. (If we’re talking Lottery win-sized Wish Lists, have a butcher’s at this. The 1966 release is out now: in that year, 75% of all the singles Motown released made the charts. Re-read that last sentence again and then have a bit of a lie down.)

While Tamla Motown went for – and located with absolute precision – the commercial pulse, the smaller, less showy Stax label was really where the soul was at.  And whether Motown likes to admit it or not, there would have been no What’s Going On had it not been for the likes of Respect Yourself.

Imagine this:

In spring 1967 British audiences got the opportunity to experience the Stax Revue for the first time. The 13-date tour boasted a wealth of the label’s talent – Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Arthur Conley, Carla Thomas and Eddie Floyd – performing with the musicians who had recorded dance-floor and jukebox favourites such as “Knock on Wood” and “You Don’t Know Like I Know”.

In an age when the word is overused to the point of meaninglessness, to witness the Stax Revue must have been amazing.

I’m waffling.  I don’t know where this is going.  This is why I don’t write about music – I can’t. 

There’s an interview in the new issue of Mojo with George Martin in which he is far more eloquent about music’s etherealness.

Anyway, the above extract is from an article in today’s Independent by Gavin Martin celebrating Stax’s 50th anniversary. It’s worth reading.

And there’s a new series called Soul Britannia from the team behind 2005′s wonderful Soul Deep, starting tonight on BBC4.  Could be good.

I’ll get back to Joe Tex now.  S.Y.S.L.J.F.M…